Yesterday was Celina’s birthday- she turned 13! She is an amazing person, side effects a super talented singer, gastritis really smart, and beautiful! We had a really fun time celebrating. My mom, two sisters, and I went and saw Rio in the theater. It was a cute movie with fun music and now I really want to go to Rio de Janerio. Celina got a couple of Wii games for her birthday, one of which was the Harry Potter Lego game. We played that quite a bit yesterday- it’s really fun! We just go around smashing everything we can…hehe. After BBQ chicken and rolls and corn for dinner, Celina, my mom, and I went swimming. The water was sooo warm. I liked it though. We had a lot of fun fighting over pool toys :) Then we went home and ate the cake that I’d spent a lot of the day making.

What cake you ask? Oh it was pretty intense. I made an Oreo Cake. Now this cake is not calorie free. However, a slice of this cake really doesn’t have more calories than watermelon, so don’t feel bad about eating it! The process of making this cake was pretty involved and there were times where I just about lost it. But in the end I think it was worth it! (Be warned, this is a long post!)

I started by making the two chocolate cake layers. I used the Pioneer Woman chocolate sheet cake recipe (best chocolate cake ever!) and baked it in two 9″ pans.

You start by mixing together your flour and sugar and whatnot.

That is not butter. Nope it’s not. It’s…umm..tofu.

Add your tofu and cocoa mixture to the dry ingredients.

And mix ’em together! With a wooden spoon! It really is so much fun! Now you need buttermilk but I never have buttermilk to I just take milk and put a ton of lemon juice in it. Then you add your eggs, vanilla, and baking soda. It starts fizzing and stuff! I always feel like it’s some sort of science experiment. Oh here’s a hint, when a recipe calls for baking soda, you have to put it in. Hem hem…not that I’ve EVER made this recipe and forgotten the baking soda. And I’ve definitely not done that twice. Nope!

Now I learned a while ago how to fold parchment paper so you can easily get the perfect circle. It’s so easy! And your cakes really won’t stick to the pan at all. Look up how to do it! I’m sure there are plenty of videos of how to do it.

So I put the batter in the pan and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. I thought they were done but I realized a little while later that one of the chocolate layers was still kinda raw…the only thing I could at that point was cut away the raw-ish part (it was only one section in the middle). I hacked up that cake layer and then flipped it over and made it the bottom of the cake. And nobody will ever know. Unless they read this.

After the chocolate cake layers were done, I made the chocolate frosting for the outside of the cake. This frosting is from Sugar Plum and is one of my favoritest chocolate frostings ever! I’ve altered this frosting before to make it into nutella frosting, too. It’s really good. But I didn’t do that this time. For this frosting you make a pudding-like mixture first.

Milk.

Flour. Sugar. Cocoa. Some other stuff. (I do this picture thingy for fun…if I were you, I would follow the recipe I put at the bottom of the page instead of my perhaps-not-accurate picture captions.)

You whisk this mixture together until it gets really thick. Then put it in a bowl and put it in the fridge/freezer to cool it.

After it’s cool, you need to strain it. I hate straining this mixture so much. It’s hard to do and I get chocolate everywhere and I ended up breaking the strainer. Straining this mixture is a delightful, easy process. Once it’s strained, you cream some butter tofu.

Then you add the strained pudding mixture and melted chocolate chips.

And blend it all up until it’s creamy!

Then you eat this entire bowl of frosting to make yourself feel better because the yellow cake layer just came out of the satanic oven and it’s inedible.

I didn’t really do that.

But I kinda wanted to.

The yellow cake layer I was making didn’t really turn out. And I was a tad bit frustrated.

Yellow cake+ Oreo chunks. How could that go wrong??? Oh I thought of a way. When your OVEN STOPS WORKING AFTER YOU PUT THE CAKE IN TO BAKE AND AFTER 30 MINUTES YOU GO TO TAKE THE CAKE OUT AND IT’S NOT EVEN COOKED AND SO YOU RESTART THE OVEN AND LET IT SIT IN THE OVEN FOR ANOTHER 30 MINUTES. Not that that was frustrating at all.

Now this may not look horrible. But it had the texture of…a sponge and tasted really gross. In the trash it goes!

This is when I cleaned up and went to the movies. And then I came back and tried this again. The oven worked this time! And here’s the cake layer a second time. Much better.

So now you have your 3 cake layers and outside frosting. All you have to do left is the filling! I got this filling recipe from Bakergirl and actually doubled her recipe because I didn’t think it would be enough. If anyone wants oreo filling, come on over. We have a ton in the fridge. The filling is basically heavy cream skim milk, powdered sugar, vanilla, and oreo crumbs. See that red handle? That’s the handle of our little spatula. He’s a little…err weak. He could barely handle folding the oreo crumbs into the whipped cream without breaking.

Next you assemble the cake!

I don’t know if you can tell how tall this is. It’s really really tall.

I had a really hard time covering the outside with the chocolate frosting. Note to self: less filling, more frosting.

Oh yum.

I hope you don’t mind messy cakes because this one was pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to cut neatly. We’re celebrating with our grandparents tonight and are gonna eat more of this cake. I suggested we just go at it with forks. That’d be the easiest thing to do! But it really was pretty magnificent. It’s not often that I get to make a totally crazy over-the-top cake. Actually I think the last time I made a cake as intense as this one was last year for my sister’s birthday.

In a saucepan, whisk together sugar flour, cocoa, salt, and milk. Bring it to a boil, whisking frequently. Boil for 1 minute or until the mixture is thick. Remove the pan from heat and strain mixture in a small bowl. Cool completely in the refrigerator or freezer. I just realized that this recipe says to strain it before you cool it. I am so bad at following directions. Like I have seriously made this frosting recipe probably 10 times. Maybe this would be easier to strain when it’s still hot. I’ll try that next time. Hem hem.

After the mixture is cool, beat the butter until creamy, about one minute. Beat in the chocolate pudding mixture until well combined, about 1 minute. Beat in melted chocolate chips until well combined and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Another note about this. I put the frosting in the fridge until I was ready to assemble the cake. When I took it out of the fridge, it was really hard. So I used my mixer and beat it until it was soft again and then frosted the cake.

Oreo Yellow Cake Recipe

Prepare a 1/2 of a yellow cake box mix. For me, this meant using 2 cups of the mix, 1.5 eggs, 1/6 of a cup of oil, and 2/3 cup water. Then you cut a sleeve of double stuffed oreos into fourths and stir it into the batter. Pour it into a 9″ pan and bake according to the box time. You could make your own yellow cake instead of the box mix. But I didn’t. Yep.

Oreo Filling Recipe

Recipe from Baker Girl (The frosting she used for her cupcakes is what I used for filling.)

Yeah I doubled this recipe. I don’t know that that was necessary. So use your own judgment. Or you can one and a half the recipe. That’d probably be the smartest thing to do.
I ended up using close to 2 packages of double stuffed oreos for this.